Clergy: The Rev. Mayor of Dijon

If a New Yorker mentions the name Wagner to a bartender, all he is likely to get is a growl. But if a citizen of the French city of Dijon mentions the name of his mayor to a waiter in a bistro, he gets an aperitif made of three-fourths dry white wine, one-fourth Crème de Cassis. The kir is Dijon's tribute to the Rev. Félix Kir, the improbable Roman Catholic priest who is mayor of this city of 142,000.

Jaunty old Canon Kir is a Gallic equivalent of the late Fiorello La Guardia—a Napoleon-sized (5 ft. 3 in.) "autocrat" with no inhibitions. In his normal dress of beret, black cassock and high-laced shoes, Kir occasionally descends on the gendarmé directing traffic at Dijon's Coin du Miroir, takes over, creates monumental traffic tie-ups. At the inauguration of a new public school gymnasium, Kir, cassock and all, shinnied up five feet of rope to answer a photographer's challenge. When he found himself locked out of his apartment, Kir stalked back to a firehouse, borrowed a ladder, climbed up two stories, smashed a window with his elbow, crawled inside.

Songs & Toasts. Charles de Gaulle has called him "the clown in a cassock." But mustard-making Dijon loves him. The city has happily elected him mayor and Deputy to Parliament for 18 years. Last week, on his 88th birthday, his desk was piled high with congratulatory messages. The band of the local infantry regiment turned up at town hall to serenade him with Burgundian drinking songs, and everyone joined in a toast—a kir, of course.

Kir began his career as a country curate, but was drafted by the Bishop of Dijon for a team of priestly commandos who specialized in street-corner evangelism. He learned to give free-thinking hecklers tit for tat. "You talk a lot about God, but we've never seen him," one yelled at him. "Prove to us he exists." Answered the canon: "You've never seen my derriere, have you? Nevertheless, it exists!"

Only with Generals. Kir more or less appointed himself mayor of Dijon in June 1940 after the town's officials fled before the advancing German armies. When a German colonel burst through the door and extended his hand, Kir spurned it. "Excuse me," he said, "but I only shake hands with generals." For a few months the Germans kept Kir on as town overseer—until they discovered that he had put municipal employees to work forging false identity cards for escaped prisoners of war. He was convicted on charges of aiding the Resistance, spent 57 days in a death cell. When he kept up his work with the underground after his release, the Germans sent French collaborators to kill him; Kir survived only because a bullet aimed at his heart hit a thick notebook in his chest pocket.

After the war, Kir was overwhelmingly elected mayor as a moderate conservative. Dijon's anticlericals admit that he has scrupulously shunned favoring the interests of his church. Kir's antics infuriate some other priests and conservative Catholic laymen, but his discreetly tolerant bishop refers to him as "a very worthy priest."